Going Bald
This is purported to be the hottest day of the year out here in San Diego. My weather.com app (now owned and operated by the once-venerable IBM) tells me it is already 87 and the sun has just come up. The high is supposed to get to 109. Yesterday was the first time since their installation in April, that my Tesla Wall Batteries got a workout. The electricity grid from San Diego Gas & Electric went out at about 4:45pm and stayed out for a little over two hours. I know this with good precision since my Tesla app (now run by Tesla, which, with a market capitalization of $390B, is almost 4X that of IBM, but still only 20% the size of Apple’s market capitalization) tells me so and shows me the batteries kicking in instantaneously when the grid went down. For all the penny-wise benefit I get from my Tesla batteries in their routine energy shifting by keeping me from using expensive peak power on a daily basis, this emergency power mode is what I bought the batteries for. And when push came to shove, they performed admirably. In addition to being almost seamless in providing the house with power when the grid went down, the Tesla system actually warned me a day in advance that a likely outage event would occur and that it was, all on its own, taking matters into its own hands. That means that my batteries did not cover my peak usage on Friday night as they usually do, because they were in “Storm Watch” mode and saving their charge for when Tesla thought I would need it. And I did need it. So Bravo Tesla, you done good, and I don’t even mind that your wrested control of my surroundings in a move of benign energy dictatorship.
When I had the batteries installed I was explicitly told that the batteries, which each store 13.5 kw of energy, would last me for the night, but only if I recognized that the big users (strangely enough, the biggest is my Tesla car) could not get served. That means no air conditioning since those puppies draw about 8 KWh and that means my two batteries would only last about 3 hours max. They were supposed to wire my house so the air conditioners and Tesla recharger were on a separate circuit and would not get served by the batteries. Well, for technical reasons involving a trench and yadda-yadda-yadda, the recharger is off the circuit, but the air conditioners are on the circuit. That meant that it was up to me to take care of that, and after an hour of watching my battery power drop precipitously, I remembered to do just that. I got as low as 58% power in my batteries when the grid came back on line. That meant that all the engineering estimates of energy consumption during an outage proved more or less correct. I just need to be a bit quicker to respond next time. I will note that Kim thought maybe turning the baked potatoes in the oven off might be a good idea for both energy and heat reasons, but the potatoes were already done, so it was a moot point, or a Joey would say on Friends, it was like a cow’s opinion, a “moo point”.
That was on a 106 Saturday, so I will assume that on a 109 Sunday we might also have another grid outage during the peak time starting at about 4pm, so I will be on the lookout. My batteries are fully charged and given the sunny day ahead, I can expect a repeat of my 46 kw solar generation like I had yesterday. That will cover most of my daytime needs, but the way the grid works, what it means is that since the solar uptake does not perfectly match my usage patterns I will buy some off-peak energy from the grid at $.26/KWh and I will sell some into the grid for $.02/ KWh. What a racket, but that is the price we all must pay to have a regulated utility that serves the public good over its shareholders (or at least as much of that program as the Republic of California can demand and police). We are having a few family members (Kathy & Bennett and Jeff & Lisa) over for an indoor cool dinner and that will mean that I will be muscling the Tesla battery and grid situation into air conditioned submission from 4pm – 7pm just in case we go into outage mode again.
I think of this as part of our new normal, or at least a part of my new normal here on this San Diego hilltop. Energy profligacy has been the hallmark of my generation. It is only fitting that we should be called to task to be more conscious of what energy we spend and how we spend it. Saving up a bit so we can have a pleasant time with friends and family seems like a good choice and just enough conservation and awareness to make me a better citizen. As I sit here under my 84” Big Ass Fan in the living room, I am reminded that I made the right decision installing these suckers last year and this year in four rooms. With their automated operation (they detect a combination of temperature and physical presence to turn on or off), they are a Godsend during these heat waves and a nice comfort add-on during regular weather. I have learned again what the tropics taught me in my youth, that keeping air flowing makes a world of difference. I also just dropped the shades in the bedroom. We usually use them to black out the night, but open them to the brightness of the day. When I lived in Rome, I noted that all the city residents used their built-in shutters for light and heat management, leaving them down during the heat of day so that the cool terrazzo floors would stay cool all day long. I must also add that when you see where the Spanish Missionaries built their 21 Missions along the coast of California, they were smart enough to locate them not on the beach or too far inland, but at the crest of a hill where the sea breezes would help cool them without pummeling them in a storm or scorching them with reflected heat. I have growing respect for my hilltop location with its sun shades and Big Ass Fans and now think of all of that as a necessity, much more than a nice-to-have.
Yesterday, in keeping with the spirit of our heat wave, I also decided it was a good time for a haircut. When I was a kid, I would get a short crew cut in the beginning of summer and it would last me until back-to-school time. It was short and cool and easy to maintain. As I got older I went through the long hair phase as we all did in the 60’s and 70’s, but I am “blessed” with very thick hair with a somewhat Simian hairline that has my eyebrows connected to my temples. That meant that my college days photos make me look like something from the far side of Papua New Guinea…during a monsoon. As I grew older, I started cutting my hair shorter and shorter for both ease and neatness. Yesterday, having had six months of self-barbering lessons, I took my clippers to my head with snap-on combs that ranged from 3mm to 9mm, trying my best to go from bottom to top in some form of graduated manner. I feel good about my self-barbering skills, but I must rationalize yesterday’s cut as the summer crew cut equivalent of my youthful who-gives-a-shit-anyway attitude. So today I am sporting a cool and bristly who-gives-a-shit-anyway haircut and the full awareness that it will all grow back again over the next month or so. Clipping yourself bald sure beats going bald any way you slice it.